Saugus dad pleads guilty to child rape

SALEM – James Beal, the Saugus father charged with raping a 16-year-old town girl in 2009 and 2010, pleaded guilty in Superior Court Friday to child rape.Judge Timothy Feeley sentenced Beal to up to three-and-a-half years in state prison following the suspect’s guilty plea.Beal pleaded guilty to a lesser charge than the aggravated rape charge he pleaded innocent to last Aug. 8. Assistant District Attorney Jessica Strasnick and Beal’s attorney, Robert Normandin of Lowell, told Feeley on Friday they agreed to the child rape plea and jointly recommended a two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half year sentence for Beal.Read a statement from the victim’s mother.”This is an agreement that came after multiple conversations with the victim and the victim’s family,” Strasnick told Feeley.Strasnick said the aggravated rape charge initially filed against Beal carries a mandatory minimum 10-year prison sentence.She said Beal, 27 Jasper St., had “a friendly relationship” with the girl prior to October 2009 when, over the course of the next year, he “digitally penetrated” the girl five times.”Are the facts substantially correct?” Feeley asked Beal, a Saugus contractor.”Uh, yes,” Beal told the judge.Feeley agreed to Normandin’s request for a two-week stay of sentence allowing Beal to remain in the House of Correction in Middleton through May 3, before he starts serving his sentence in Massachusetts Corrections Institute Cedar Junction in Walpole.Strasnick said the 227 days Beal spent in Middleton will be deducted from his prison sentence.Following Beal’s plea, Normandin said the plea agreement “took into consideration” Beal’s lack of a criminal record and the “wishes of the alleged victim.””He admitted to culpability. He wants to get this behind him. It was difficult because James has always maintained his innocence,” Normandin said.District Attorney’s spokesman Steve O’Connell said Beal’s plea spared the teenage victim from having to testify during a trial and “ensured the certainty of a conviction.””The victim and her family were in full agreement with this resolution,” O’Connell said.The girl’s mother submitted a victim impact statement to Feeley through Strasnick in which she stated her concerns that Beal “will get out of jail and either take her against her will or harm her for rejecting him.””I still believe that he is obsessed with my daughter,” she wrote.Saugus police reports filed in District Court last summer detailed how Beal’s wife, Barbara, contacted Det. Sean Moynihan and told him she believed Beal was “having a relationship with a child.”On the weekend of July 22, 2011, according to the report, a family friend told Barbara Beal he intended to contact police after his daughters related a conversation with the girl that indicated to the friend that James Beal had physical contact with the teenage victim.Strasnick told District Court Judge Stacey Fortes White last September that the allegations against Beal included more than 20 incidents of digital rape.Following his arrest last August, Beal was released on $10,000 bail, but jailed in September by Fortes White after Strasnick told the judge Beal violated a stay-away order by contacting the girl. Moynihan testified in court in September that he saw the girl and Beal together on a town street.”Since James Beal has been incarcerated for violating his bail conditions by being found with my daughter in his car, she has thrived,” the girl’s mother wrote in her statement.”She no longer has to answer to him and look over her shoulder to see if he’s watching her every move. My daughter has told me that she would like James Beal to stay in jail long enough for her to graduate and get settled in a good university program – somewhere where he can’t find her,” she wrote.Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].